finally solved the tech problem of the real audio/video stream files from the archive playing properly in a pop-up window. have the space on the tech-no-mad server to load up all media archives, and now it's just a matter of organizing the html files, and making sure the audio and video windows are sized properly. it'll be nice to get all that stuff back up and running for posterity. the stream index page is full of those ancient-looking 320x240 streams that were pumped out during the time I was at Boulder, teaching at CU, with access to phat-pipe Real Helix server. a few others go back to true pre-historic times with 160x120 files from the initial neoscenes occupation project in Tornio in 1998. the accretionary process that is the core of this webspace goes onwards to an unknown end. with a miniscule audience. and no prospects.

as the share-nomad node, participate remotely at the conference at MIT MiT5: creativity, ownership, and collaboration in the digital age in Boston with share people, as share.nomad node. Martin was there from Bremen along with quite a few other nodes being represented.

finally getting around to a good look at Oog, a curatorial project by Dutch artist Nanette Hoogslags curates at Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily newspaper. I happened to meet her for the first time when I was in Amsterdam last March when I had dinner with she and her husband, network activist David Garcia, an acquaintance of mine. Nanette comments on the current state of the project:

Oog is a commentary and opinion platform for the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily national newspaper. It began in September 2004 as a platform where every week a different artist working in sound and image is asked to respond to news and current affairs. The selection of artists participating has grown into a varied group of national and international artists working with very different forms of expertise and approaches. In this way, artists are using their skills to become commentators on events in a news environment. After each week, the work is placed in the archives, making the Oog collection accessible as a whole.

The artists participating in Oog are a diverse and renowned group of applied and autonomous artists both from inside and outside The Netherlands. Oog is one of the most visited pages within the Volkskrant website with weekly visitor numbers between three- and five-thousand.

The project has been received well. People treat it exactly how it is meant -- as a combination of visual comments mixed with the 'funny pages' in a newspaper. There is a real fan-base of regular viewers as well as incidental viewers every week. Sometimes you read it, like it, and it touches you; sometimes you disagree or it doesn't do much for you; sometimes you have no time and you miss the edition. There is one difference though, in the online version there is always the readily available archive of all previous works. It's important to me to showcase as many different artists as possible, even ones that have no direct relationship with the online environment. I look around for people not just from design and fine arts, but also choreographers, architects, VJs, and sound artists. Oog is set to continue for at least another year, running parallel to an version which will be presented on an urban screen in relationship to its own website. There are many aspects of Oog I would love to develop and explore, what is keeping me back is the amount of time it takes and no funding to compensate for this time. My aim is to broaden the platform over the coming year, in both the material medium and in audience.

visiting the site, well, one does have to negotiate the Dutch, which isn't too terribly hard, though for the uninitiated it might pose some challenge. the right column is a search and navigation area for looking at the archive of past weeks work. the works are done in Flash (I believe exclusively, with the sampling that I looked at). Flash is now somewhat less popular than it used to be in the web domain, but it still remains a potent tool for more or less complex animation, sound, and video work. it is well-suited to this project, as Nanette mentions, with the work being something of a corollary of the funny pages of times past. by attaching it to a popular media site and making clear that there is a tacit intent at commentary on contemporary events -- political and otherwise -- the platform has a strong edge over other Flash gallery sites. I didn't ask her how it came to be that the newspaper is hosting the project -- whose motivation it was for them to host it. in Netherlands, though, cultural patrimony of one form or another is a relatively common circumstance that the private sector engages with some gusto. it is hard to imagine a large Amurikan newspaper doing the same except in a tightly controlled editorial environment.

Nanette initiated an earlier project on the same premise last year as a stand-alone event-based installation piece. with a simple interface, one can chose from a wide variety of works from 'traditional' political cartoons to powerful mixes of visual-sonic information -- some with overt, some with covert critical messages about those who make news and those who pre-digest it for the masses. as would be expected with the divergent styles available to Flash autours, the works are all quite unique which at some level makes the experience of browsing them full of surprises. however, the technical interface requirements of the medium do not allow one to quickly pass by weaker material. if this style of material becomes more commonly used -- with online media sites and blogs being the obvious venues -- the syntax of the medium would probably be streamlined and lend itself to more potently condensed content. whatever the case, this is a fine project, and I highly recommend a browse.

raining on arrival, raining on departure, missed a huge downpour walking to the hotel where I caught the airport shuttle. Amuirkan couple on board, from Portland, returning home after a couple months in Oz, revisiting places where they went as elementary teaching recruits in rural Australia in the early 1970's.

in the airport. Dr. Phil playing on the plasma monitors. a cleaning lady is hypnotized, looking up into the susserating brightness. between the shopping possibilities, the food options, the sonic and atmospheric environment, and the general ambiance, this place would be as close to hell as one would want to be. the consuming heaven of the first world. active shopping mitigates the alienation. passive looking plunges even the most hardcore resister into a receiver. cracks open an interstitial space by invading the social self and occupying that self, pushing aside any non-social responses. and if that isn't enough, the high-security regime underlines every possible line of action.

and then onto the plane. no comfort, though there is an empty seat in the row. bulkhead. exhausted. night comes unexpectedly quick. gaining a day. arriving four hours earlier than I depart. listening to Vonnegut, Fahrenheit 451. in the air near the Hawaiian Islands. so it goes. I had forgotten that he used this phrase whenever he mentions an individual's demise.

several projects/groups come up on the radar this week -- Woytek sends an announcement about his locating Helsinki blog designed to host psychogeographical activities within the city of Helsinki. Annu sends a note from her residency in Japan about her personal pages which do include some of her image-based art projects. also, the discos invisibles collective in Tijuana, who were part of the remote presence event in Helsinki.

miss a meeting with Angela, got the wrong cafe in Hyde Park, there are two. sent a SMS, but got no response. ended up doing more audio work -- of the Salvation Army Band in front of the big ANZAC Memorial. called her, but she must not have had her phone on. wandered down to Darling Harbor to sit and write about amplification, surrounded by amplified and simulated culture. hmm, the relationship between amplification and simulation could also be interesting to explore. where amplification is a (possible) subset of simulation. because the amplified signal is no longer the thing itself, but a simulation of the thing itself with a change of character, volume in the case of auditory works, intensification in the general sense -- the intensification of a particular neurological input signal whatever the input is. at base, electrical -- as in the stimulation of the auditory nerves. so, an intensification and sometimes narrowing of frequency (bandwidth) of the signal. simulation is also about the re-creation of an original signal -- one whose characteristics are well known -- a re-production of those characteristics. the better-known the parameters, the



better that the signal can be re-produced. always a reduction, always not the thing itself. always the reductive. efficient perhaps, amplifying the essential. but who determines the essential? that is embedded in the technology which is a determinate (determinating) product of the social system. therein is one source of a significant skewing factor in the presence of these amplified and simulated signals. that the characteristic of these signals are being largely determined by a dominant social system which may or may not be optimized for the individual, or for even the greater good. because the generating system for these re-productions has a long-term directional inertia coming from the technological production process -- the larger the infrastructure (the more generally and specifically) complex the social production system, the greater the inertia, the greater the inertial resistance to changing conditions, the less relevant the amplified signal is to the individual or collective itself.

meet Sophea, from podes to antipodes. three continents in less than a year. shaming our carbon footprints and our inst- & dis-abilities.

earlier wandering around the Opera. and making a 15-minute piece skyline of Sydney along with some sonic work. that should end up being quite good -- catching the ambient reflective sonic environment and the microscopic skyline with the video cam zoom on full. slowly and unstably tracing the man-made and natural intersection. earth and sky (back to the infinite half-spaces).

over to Randwick, do the coast walk to Bronte, recording some lawn bowling, eating fish&chips. once a decade enough on that score -- last time was in London visiting Joanna in 1996. sitting in the park that adjoins Bronte Beach, twiLight falling, the atmosphere cool, reduced, mellow. somebody playing Bob Marley on a decent sound system, a rasta picnic at the beach. hmmm, pretty nice lifestyle.

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got here. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone. There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages, so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work any more. That doesn't matter apparently. What I'd like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my goodbyes, finish dying -- Samuel Beckett in Molloy

clearly lost at words. in words, without words, for words, back words. energy ebbed under the circumstances. the demise of the workshop still a real bother. will be into the future. and not very auspicious first visit to Australia. perhaps the last visit.

missed Sophea today, she lagging from jets, coming the other way 'round the globe, via Delhi. worked on slow machines. after the walk to the College. jetfuel coffee and a nice muffin in one of the many cafs along the way, reading the newspaper, catching the local drift. the word ANZAC (Australia - New Zealand Army Corp) in the context of recent political scandals, historical honor and glory, contemporary resistance to the Iraq/Afghanistan crisis. nationalism? you bet!



walking back and forth trying different pathways, the row bungalows with the iron-railed porches and verandas, steel gratings on the doors, the more modern apartment blocks, slick, shiny, bright. life-style. many of the row houses are under remodeling, for sale and resale. there is a significant market, though nothing like the California frenzy. apparently people have also flocked to the huge tower blocks that fill the center of town, built in the last five or so years. where there used to be porn shops and big business districts.

opening of art at artspace -- squat-cum-respectable-art-establishment (i.e., British Council funding) with art -- sculpture, installation (Craig Fisher and Debra Swan), performance (Spartacus Chetwynd), media (Wade Marynowsky),



free drinks (bottled beer and white wine), appropriate speeches by appropriate personages, another token Koori using clap sticks, folks meeting and greeting. social interaction. what it's all about. the collective reinforcement of acceptability, of collective acceptance of individual expression. ritual of coming-of-age. of be-coming in the social sphere. remix.

drought is extreme in the Murray-Darling Basin of south-central Australia. all irrigation and use other than municipal domestic consumption will be halted by June if there is not significant rainfall in the next two weeks. this is the equivalent of the San Joaquin Valley of California in terms of the Australian national production of farm consumables. the Prime Minister calls for rain prayers. and a Federal take-over of the entire national water resource system. states-rights? doubtful.

washing clothes. necessary once back in a sweaty and humid climate. running between the beach and the center. something was left in a pocket of the pants. little chips of white paper on everything. literal remains.

Kly Yee, the guy in the COFA tuck shop -- does wonders with cream on the top of the coffees that he serves. tried to bluetooth some snaps he had made on his phone of different designs he had made, but wasn't successful, my SIM was full. will try again later.

what about impressions of urban Sydney? lots of small shops -- clothing, jewelry, food, cafes, small restaurants, and on every corner, upstairs the Hotel, downstairs the bar, pub, snookers hall, whatever, mostly quite upscale. clean, none of the sawdust-and-vomit-on-the-floor scene of ages past. though the design with tiling three-quarters up the walls for convenient hosing down remains. then there are the backpacker hotels, clubs, and adult entertainment joints. the occasional accupuncture and massage salons open to the sidewalk, feet protruding from behind curtained stalls and sweating Chinese hosts doing their thing. globalization is expressed in Kinkos, 7-11's, MacDonalds, Western Union, and such, though these are a definite minority, with (apparently) non-franchise places dominant. there could very well be some mafia-type of franchising going on, but not to the casual observer. cosmopolitan. even critical locals said the Olympics were a good thing. blah blah blah...

with a climate similar to areas of Southern California, comparisons would be obvious, but in terms of general quality-of-life, Sydney would out-rank SoCal easily -- especially as the population seems to enjoy the relaxed and low-key street-level cafe-scene, rather than the more obnoxious automobile-driven and anti-social SoCal mentality.

enough of banal and surficial observations. it does appear that there are significant levels of stress in the educational system. doing a brief presentation at a doctoral seminar yesterday initiated a number of conversations with some of the attendees. each detailed the particular struggle to get a quality education while dealing with personal economic issues. many students work, some full-time. the government has several funding schemes, but not all people can take advantage of then, given their individual situations. funding is time-limited, as has become the norm in Europe, and similarly, tuitions are rising.

but there seems to be a robust demographic pursuing doctoral degrees either part-time or full-time. good for them!

amplification is a primary function of molecular cascades (selective reduction of environmental cues (which are electromagnetic energy impingements on sensory receptors)), but requires that an organism has a consistent surplus of energy to provide the necessary amplification of signal. often the amplification factors are in excess of 1000x in the case of optic nerve stimulation by a single photon and the subsequent processes unleashed in the nerve cell. an organism needs consistently and readily available energy source(s) to improve the possibility of survival-to-reproduction. but why does reproduction play such a big role in a discrete/single organism's existence? -- to simply continue life -- or is life a continuum within which all organisms are connected by nature?

It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic... What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive. -- Erwin Schrödinger in What Is Life?

first-responders on the way home last night. on the way back from checking out the local sonic scene and to meet Shannon and Rick for their solo performances at LanFranchis, a (the!) local alternative space -- reminded me very much of FishBon in Santa Barbara except folks were smoking. also met Katherine, a creative writing student at UTS. the performances were good with a decent 5.1 sound system. it would have been nice to do a mix like I did for leplacard in helsinki two weeks ago. here's an ambient mix from the evening.

make it to Bondi this morning after long transport delays.



other notes on the antipodes: clouds (definitely the wrong word!) of black fruit bats the size of fat and dumpy seagulls drift (definitely do not fly!) in the late twiLight airs above the treetops. a ... disturbing ... sight. not for its natural curiosities, but for the way the beasts move -- as though they are in a drunken haze of meditative zen tranquility while moving across a space of thick gaseous vortices, all lying at the bottom of the sea. and me looking upwards.

the next note: so far, while the National Art Museum has a permanent exhibition of Aboriginal Art, I have seen only two drunk Koori around Kings Cross -- near the 20-meter-high Coke advertisement. enough said. maybe dumb idea along with this Colonial geometry but I would like to get a decent didje for working the breath when next in desert lands.

The whole world was asleep. Everything was quiet, nothing moved, nothing grew. The animals slept under the earth. One day the rainbow snake woke up and crawled to the surface of the earth. She pushed everything aside that was in her way. She wandered through the whole country and when she was tired she coiled up and slept. So she left her tracks. After she had been everywhere she went back and called the frogs. When they came out their tubby stomachs were full of water. The rainbow snake tickled them and the frogs laughed. The water poured out of their mouths and filled the tracks of the rainbow snake. That's how rivers and lakes were created. Then grass and trees began to grow and the earth filled with life. -- Koori creation story

more note: in the water. for the first time in surf for a long time. body at first not responding, that combined with the size of the breaks. a few minutes conversation with a beach guard who is out in the break herding folks away from a rip. he says it's a hell of a first day to visit Bondi -- they were pulling people out all day, jet skis crashing through the foam heading out beyond the breaks to check on surfers, and hovering choppers. sets get up to 3 meters, look like even more occasionally. it's a workout to get through even the secondary shore breaks which are easily at a meter-and-a-half. noticed the surf report online is in feet. old timers guarantee that maybe? great to be out there, though. damn. but no room for error. no body surfing, just stroking between breaks, diving deep under the curlers, and staying out of the way of anything turbulent.

superstitious or what? dawning like other days. up at the crack of (early to sleep after perusing some Plato (The Symposium)). birds cranking away. no particular breeding time, apparently when it rains it means raucous amorous. no rain, but just the arrival of daytime. something to crow about.

jumping around today. met one faculty member at COFA, then on downtown to meet Ian over at the University of Technology. catching up and mapping out the states/conditions/problematics of university educational institutions among other issues. there's a nice exhibition of large-scale portrait prints at the UTS:Gallery (digital prints, I wonder -- very sensuous paper surfaces) from Jon Lewis of images he made in Bougainville. and later, meeting Anna, finally, to have the beginning of a more long-term conversation. there was one point that we skimmed across -- the idea of setting up a consulting framework for corporate advising -- because the problems in any social structure may be the same. academic, corporate, creative, politic. and so on. beginning to expand the scope of foot-travel, changing routes, checking things out slowly. still have not internalized any form of orientation. the harbor lies east-west, and there are a variety of towering office and apartment blocks, and the downtown skyline. but the topography is contorted and wrinkled like the Coast Range immediately south of San Francisco proper, and so, no easy sights to maintain. so, with only a one-page Google printout of the immediate neighborhood, the mapping-dependent side of orienteering is limited. get lost. that and get to the beach. tomorrow. Bondi. or bust.

Now and then -- but this is rare -- one hears such words as piper for paper, lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from the lips whence one would not expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have been Home -- as the native reverently and lovingly call England -- know better. It is 'costermonger.' All over Australasia this pronunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of people. That mislaid y is rather striking when a person gets enough of it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. -- Mark Twain in The Birth of Sydney

hmmm, combinations of local circumstances impede encounters. structural deficiencies route possible crossings into different spaces. turtle-like, looking out onto a complex and unknown landscape and socio-cultural milieu.

find any openings for contact, sussing-out, phishing, checking in, checking out. finding where there is a break in the construct, gaps. small TAZ's crouched and ready. intervene, connect.

and on another note entirely. sadly, transcendently. hearing to the underside of the planet. or the reverse top. as shadows point to Antarctica. another giant come to an end in this world. how to expect that another world is? or that there is some way of standing in both for more than a while.

So it goes. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

interview passes smoothly, no need for the pre-tension of notes. great pressure to articulate in brief the complex topics of life-practices. the results will be known in a week already. fast and efficient compared to the debacle of the other recent US university interaction. it will be a tough choice if there is an affirmative. there is a deeply-felt distance from everything I know in the world, being here. settling into yet another life here. finding a place. Sydney is urban, though with a slick easiness of calm inner relaxation. huh? words can't circumscribe it yet. at all. haven't made any photographs yet either. a few audio samples, but nothing definitive. walking home after sunset, the skyline of downtown is silhouetted against a singularly sharp sky.

Life is impossible at high temperatures. That's why I have reached the conclusion that anguished people, whose inner dynamism is so intense that it reaches paroxysm, and who cannot accept normal temperatures, are doomed to fall. The destruction of those who live unusual lives is an aspect of life's demonism, but it is also an aspect of its insufficiency, which explains why life is the priviledge of mediocre people. Only mediocrities live at life's normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life. -- E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

Easter weekend drifts into Easter Monday, sunny, puffy clouds, changing Light. sunshine is still hot. non-native trees shedding leaves. others like overgrown houseplants are fat and green. nobody else seems worried that winter is coming. what winter? stay inside working while Brad and Amanda are out and about. don't mind being inside, just needing some down time, and will be outside in the mix enough in the coming days. Bondi calls, soon enough. weather is inscrutable. different. exposed to difference. just the sun being in the north in winter-time is enough to throw brain and full body off.

a couple days in Livermore. lumpy sleeping on piles of dis-used or dis-placed bio-rhythms. but two days in the pool for abbreviated workouts. that's a relief. though the real results of all the hard rehabilitation work of the previous 15 months has dribbled away in the hectic urban travel of the last two months. the only redeeming physical process has been walking around, taking the stairs rather than the elevator.

this day starts two days ago with an afternoon drop-off at the Bart Station in Dublin, exposed to the intensity of 10 lanes of rush-hour traffic on each side of the station. uff!

about to land, the plane delayed its take-off in order not to arrive before 0600, before which is an aviation curfew time when landing would initiate a fine of USD 250k! don't wanna wake up those sleeping Aussies. the Pacific slipped by, unnoticed under a waning moon. have wondered at those who chose to sail it in times past. to be on it, at the center of a reduced world, as though on a ship in space, with stars filling the vaulting dome to the rim.

get one of these fantastic super-nice mikroPaliskunta reindeer t-shirts from the collaborative cultural project that Mari is working on. for women in sizes S - L and for men in sizes M - XXL. Colours: black-on-orange, orange-on-black, and orange-on-lime. raakaa ajoa means, liberally translated, raw driving ... price only for you 10 euros (non-profit) plus postage. you can reach her at mkk ||at|| katastro ||dot|| fi.

Europe fading into its own spring, much warmer than normal, so that it wasn't such a stretch for the body to cope with along the way. up well before dawn, Alex takes the same taxi to the airport. we meet some other retreating Pixelachers at the cafe in the departures lounge. then it's off to London for the first of four flights and four security checks -- five airports later, Nancy and Steve meet me at SFO. always the luxury of familiar faces at the airport.

final calculations, despite the incredible synergy of this trip, it ends up being fiscally unsustainable. gotta shift gears. move to another model. the dynamic of encounter does not need to change, except in some surficail forms, but the social venue of encounter has to shift radically. putting out such immense quantities of life-energy in this engagement process. saying it over and over in mind, the deep disappointment after spending life-time in the face-to-face and having that not be sustainable. at all. seems like the different Others engaged with over the course of the trip have a viable position in the social system, have found that sustainability. where is the missing element in the equation? nothing in life is guaranteed, but examining the momentary conditions that predominated, there was an essential element of stability which is missing in the current personal modus. making contacts, having discussions about situations, conditions, systems, solutions, and most importantly, ways of seeing the world, and ways of action and remembering the reasons for be-ing. but unsustainability remains the upper-most issue to be solved soon. converting attentions into cash.

rising too early again, out to Turku with a few hard-cores to tour the exhibition Digitally Yours that Andy Best had curated. not enough sleep. even our tireless Pixelache host, Juha, was unable to roll out of bed in time for the train, so it ended up there were only five of us who actually made the trip, but it was well worth it.

begin to get a migraine after seeing the show at the Ars Nova museum -- most of the artists were there, so we were able to interact with them directly. I recorded several of the talks, so, hope to get that online shortly. great also to have a bit of time to spend with Mukul and Manu with their deLightful boy.

Digitally Yours examines the relationship between technology and humanity. The exhibition maps out how everyday life and art have changed over the period when digital technologies have become commonplace. The artists in the exhibition all use digital technologies but their relationship to it is critical. They consider the relationship between man and machine, the dreams and promises, the realities and threats. The works in the exhibition ponder the fundamental questions of humanity in this globalised information networked world, while building on a new type of collaboration between the artist and the viewer.

Animaatiokone Industries (FI); Laura Beloff (FI) & Erich Berger (AT); Elina Mitrunen (FI); Chris Burden (US); Anita Fontaine (AU/US); Phil Coy (UK); Ed Burton (UK) & Zachary Lieberman (US); Juha Huuskonen (FI) & Tuomo Tammenpää (FI); Manu Luksch (AT/UK) Christian Nold (UK); Stanza (UK); Soda (UK); Markus Renvall (FI); Åsa Ståhl (SE) & Kristina Lindström (SE); Pia Tikka (FI)

on the way back, I get off before Helsinki to have dinner with David and Maria at their new place in the countryside. unfortunately, my head it really done in by then, so, I'm hardly good company. David drives me to Linnunlaulu where I finish packing. the migraine dissipates somewhat and I am able to go to the closing party for an hour to say goodbye to folks. then off to crash for another even earlier rise and 26 hours of travel torture.